Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster Monday over diesel prices. In the same stretch, at least 16 trucking companies landed in bankruptcy court, Iowa farmers started saying out loud that they might lose family farms, and on Tuesday the Conference Board reported that Americans’ confidence in the economy fell to its lowest level since 2014.
Any one of those would be a bad news day. Together they tell one story. The fuel shock from the Iran war has moved off the gas station sign and into the businesses that move food and pay people. Freight, farms, used cars, credit cards and commercial real estate are all showing the same strain at once, and the Federal Reserve just raised interest rates on top of it.
You’ll feel it first…